Ants are very dumb little creatures. They don't know how to do anything. They just seem to do everything at random.
Ant colonies, by contrast, are smart, and can accomplish complex tasks.
Ants normally wander around at random. When they find food, they take it to their nest and leave a pheromone trail behind.
However, their random behavior is not completely random. The probabilities are influenced by pheromones. When there are more pheromones, there is a bigger chance that they will take this direction.
When there is a source of food, after some time the pheromone trail is so strong that all ants go there, and in turn make the trail stronger.
When the food is exhausted, the pheromone trail will disappear.
This basic way of working is called synergy: Ants leave signals for other ants. Together they can get something done.
No single ant knows where to find the food. But the whole colony does know.
This type of synergy is based on an artificial signal that the ants exchange, but the signal can also be the environment itself.
An example of this is the creation of ant cemeteries.
The ants drop dead ants at random places. But again, the probability is not completely random.
This time, they are more likely to drop dead ants in the proximity of other dead ants.
After some time, there are only huge piles of dead ants.
There are many other examples of this phenomenon, not only in ant colonies, but also in termite colonies, bee swarms and the like. I will discuss some of them in the future.
This phenomenon is very common in nature, and in fact all self organisation in nature seems to be based on this principle.
In the future, i will discuss examples that seem to be very different, but suggest that this interaction between simple systems is the key to understanding complexity and intelligence.